Howzit Howard

Let me plant a seed with you

Because I rise at about 2 a.m., and want to be with my bride in the evening, I sleep in two shifts: from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., and the next afternoon from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. It's actually more complicated than that -- if I don't get enough in the afternoon I might turn in sooner at night, for example, and I also find that when you sleep in shifts you can get by on fewer than eight full hours most of the time -- but you get the idea. That's not the real topic of this post but I'm getting to it. The thing about sleeping in the afternoon is that the heat of the sun zaps through my south-facing bedroom window and can make the room too hot for sleeping. Now we're getting really close to the true topic of the post. But let's go first to a fellow who appeared on "Sunrise" this morning. Jason Sickmiller has a great job. He's an arborist with Hawaiian Electric. HECO has 15 crews of people who care for trees that stand near power lines, pruning them so they don't endanger the lines (which would lead to their being cut down altogether, of course.) These men and women also play a role in the company's annual Arbor Day Tree Giveaway, which is this coming weekend. HECO and its partners will give away 2,600 native and exotic trees and shrubs this year at six sites on Oahu. Experts are on hand to tell how to care for the free plants. It happens Saturday. Visit http://www.arbordayhawaii.org for locations and more information. If you're going, go early. They usually run out of trees in two hours. "Strategic placement of trees and shrubs along the sunny sides of a house will help cool the home and will reduce air conditioning costs," HECO's Janet Crawford said.  There it is: the true topic. One of the simplest ways to reduce your electric bill is to put something in the way of the afternoon sun before its beams reach your windows. Living on the 33rd floor, I don't have the shade tree option. So I'm curious -- have you had a good experience with that plastic tinting you can put on windows?

Our economic news, and other people ' s

Alex the Chief Loyalty Officer isn't burying his face in his paws, but other executives at Central Pacific Bank must be wondering what they did to offend the banking gods. They made a perfectly sensible strategic decision to both expand and diversify their bank by doing more lending outside Hawaii, specifically in California. Part of their thinking, one assumes, was that if the Hawaii economy went into a slump, any local financial setbacks would be mitigated by business on the mainland. Only what happened was the opposite. The Hawaii economy held up very nicely, thank-you very much, while California turned out to be one of the states hardest hit by the subprime mortgage default crisis. That's why, just days after glowing reports of Hawaii profits logged by Bank of Hawaii and First Hawaiian Bank, Central Pacific reported Tuesday that its third quarter profit was only about $9 million, half of what Wall Street expected. Even this isn't as bad as it sounds: profits fell because the bank made a multimillion-dollar provision for losses, not because of actual losses of that magnitude. In other words, they took a lot of money that in better times would have been profit, and set it aside just in case a lot more loans go south. It's what banks do.  I'm going to interview CEO Clint Arnoldus on my public television show in a couple weeks and I fully expect him to say that if you broke out the Hawaii operations separately the bottom line would have been somewhat better. First Hawaiian, by reporting its own operating results, is effectively doing that, since it's owned by BancWest, which also owns the way bigger Bank of the West and thus has most of its operations on the mainland; and BancWest is in turn owned by Paris-based BNP Paribas, which has its own issues from time to time that don't even involve the same currency we use. If you saw my report on Friday's KGMB9 News at 5, you know where I'm going with this -- the Hawaii economy is currently (and often) very different from the mainland economy. Mainland consumers warmed, probably warmed too much, to adjustable rate mortgages, even subprimes. Many people were aggressively sold mortgages they could never afford. These notes often began with low payments that they could make, but then ballooned to unpayably high rates. A crisis-load of these notes balloon at the end of the year and the mainland economy will be both shaken and stirred by this unless most of these people get serious credit counseling help, and I mean now. It happened here, too -- hundreds of people got into mortgages they can't afford. But the total percentage of such loans is very small compared to the mainland, because Hawaii consumers, like Hawaii bankers, are more conservative and more suspicious of anything where the price leaps heavenward later. So far the crisis may actually have been a net benefit to Hawaii. It doesn't seem to have affected California tourist traffic to Hawaii in any appreciable way. And financial uncertainty has led to lower mortgage rates, perhaps propping up Hawaii home sales by keeping some homes from breaking through the affordability ceiling. By the way, if you don't follow stocks or banking closely, Central Pacific Bank is still in good health. All the local banks are.

A Day at the Races

If the mere name Hugo Z. Hackenbush makes you smile, chances are, you're a fan of the Marx Brothers. I revisited their hit movie "A Day at the Races" last night and refreshed my view that these are some of the best comedies ever made. Groucho plays a veterinarian masquerading as a doctor to help the heroine save her sanitarium (the term used in those days for a health spa) with the "assistance" of Chico, who drives the sanitarium van when he's not conning people at the race track, and Harpo, a jockey who has been beaten by the bad guy for not throwing a race. "Marry me and I'll never look at another horse!" Groucho says to professional dowager Margaret Dumont, whom he earlier diagnoses as having "double blood pressure" -- high blood pressure on one side and low blood pressure on another. At another point Groucho tries to take Harpo's pulse and says, "Either he's dead or my watch has stopped." The fourth Marx Brother, Zeppo, who played the romantic lead in the first five movies ("The Cocoanuts," sic, "Horse Feathers," "Animal Crackers," "Monkey Business" and "Duck Soup," though I may have the order wrong), agreed with the general view that he wasn't as talented as his brothers and quit to become an agent. Allen Jones, who sang "The Donkey Serenade" and fathered "Love Boat" theme singer Jack Jones, replaced him for "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races," and was far better than Zeppo, but ironically all of the leading men who succeeded him were so bad that even Zeppo would have been an improvement. The first movies were based on the Marx Brothers' hit shows on Broadway, and were dense with gags because the brothers tannyabed to keep from getting bored, then kept any new stage business that worked. George S. Kauffman, the playwright, famously stood at the back of the house and murmured to his musical collaborator one night, "I could have sworn I just heard one of the original lines." But "A Day at the Races" and "A Night at the Opera" were written especially for the movies. They were still very funny but had better story lines, music and choreography. Subsequent movies by the brothers, such as "Go West," "The Big Store," and "At the Circus," failed to live up to the high standard, though they were still funnier than most other people's best work.

The mortgage banker ' s lament

This week I spoke to a meeting at the Sheraton Waikiki of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Hawaii. They've invited me before and I like them -- they're a good crowd, ask intelligent questions, and don't get upset if I express an opinion they don't agree with. They were just a nanodegree less ebullient this year, though. They feel like people are lumping them together with the predatory lenders who created the subprime mortgage crisis by hard-selling loans to people who can't afford them. There is some sentiment in the mortgage community that there are some people who always pursue the quick buck, who got into the mortgage lending business when they realized they could game the system by pressing borrowers to put down more income than they actually had. This is the same kind of person who a generation ago were hard-selling maginal high-tech IPOs as if each one was going to be the next Microsoft. Jeff Booth's birthday this week was also the anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929, which came about because of similar people. They sold stock on margin to people who didn't know what they were doing, having first persuaded themselves that everything was going to be fine indefinitely. The two lessons from this. The first is that there will always be a quick rich scheme that works for a while and then doesn't. The second is that the next time it will be something different from last time.

Blogging about blogging

A Scarborough Research study finds 12% of Honolulu adults have blogged or read a blog in the past 30 days, half again more than the national average. Honolulu and San Diego tied for fifth bloggingest cities, after Austin, Tex. (home of Dell Computer), Portland, Ore., Seattle and San Francisco. This is my first blog, though I had a column for several years in Pacific Business News that sometimes felt like a blog. My daughter has a blog which is really well-written and makes me very proud of her. I am a fan of Ian Lind's local blog, which can include exclusive reporting about a local story or remarks about his cats, depending on the day. I'm struck by the evolution of blog style. Early blogs tended to be full of attitude; now they are full of personality, like reading a first-person novel. Most Internet writing has struggled for years to find a style. But the style of news writing on Internet websites is easier to explain, since I knew many of the key people hired to write content on AOL, MSNBC and other influential site in the early days. Basically, everyone tried to argue that Internet style should reflect whatever they were used to from their previous jobs in old media. The former broadcasters wanted a brief, breezy style; the former newspaper people wanted to follow print style. Most Internet styles will eventually be close to current blog style, reflecting (1) the fast, frequent posting that is common to the most widely-read sites, and (2) the infinitely expandable length that is uniquely characteristic of the Web, in contrast to the time and space constraints of radio/TV and print.

Jeff ' s day in history

Jeff Booth, whose birthday we made some small reference to on "Sunrise" today, mentioned in the newsroom that he shared a birthday with the football great Y.A. Tittle.  That made me curious. What else happened on Jeff's birthday in history? I looked it up. He also shares his birthday with Kevin Kline, the Big Bopper, and that Asian guy who plays the shrink on "Law & Order." The astronomer Tycho Brahe died on this date in 1601. Important events in history that occurred on Oct. 24 included the Great Crash of 1929, the Russian Revolution (1917), the founding of the United Nations (1945) and the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk (1911). Jeff is a former art student and will be happy to hear that the much-painted Cathedral at Chartres was dedicated on Oct. 24, 1260. The first transcontinental telegraph line was completed on this date in 1861 (spelling the end of the Pony Express after only a year and a half of operation) and this date in 1901 saw the first person go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Romancing the tone

Honolulu Pops maestro Matt Catingub has turned a festival into a franchise, while exploring new artistic territory. In recent days Catingub has released "Back to Romance," a sequel to last year's "Return to Romance," fresh recordings of great romantic tunes by excellent artists, mostly local. He also announced plans for the 2008 Hawaii Romance Festival, itself a sequel to this year's successful concert series. Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and Aaron Neville have signed to sing. The new album sits before me, still in its plastic wrapper. Since Jeff Peterson played at my wedding (a Filipina romance) I'm eager to hear his "Spanish Romance," and who knows what Jake Shimabukuro has done with "Moonglow." Catingub likes to change things. He likes to perform a well-known song in a different tempo -- Pops patrons have heard him sing the little-known words to the "I Love Lucy" theme as a ballad; it worked. For these romance albums he has mischievously assigned artists to repertory with which they are not associated. Last year I was allowed to be a fly on the wall when Raiatea Helm sang "My Romance" in a key so low that it took her awhile to find her bottom note. The result was a torch song, as intimate as a kiss, from an artist you associate with kani kapila falsetto. This year Catingub offers Hapa performing the Beatles song "Something," while Jimmy Borges, so known for his jazz, reaches into the Fifties for "My Special Angel." (You remember the Four Freshmen version of 1969 but Bobby Helm recorded it in 1957 and two years later it was covered by Keely Smith, the woman who sang those hilarious duets with Louie Prima.) Catingub himself does "Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?" -- the 1972 tune from one-hit wonder Hurricane Smith. (Catingub, appearing on "Sunrise," was surprised that I remembered it, but then surprised me with the information that Smith had been the recording engineer for the early Beatles albums.) Probably the first track I'll sample at home will be Robert Cazimero's rendition of "I Only Have Eyes for You." Note: All the performers on "Back to Romance" are male. I mention this because it telegraphs what Catingub probably intends for next year's release. Now you can look forward to it for 12 months!

NEXT year ' s Gridiron

It's the Monday after Gridiron and time to start thinking about... next year's Gridiron. One of the few sensibilities I retain from my years of living in Washington, D.C., is that the measure of a city's sophistication is the ability of its most important persons to laugh at themselves. The nation's capital has a Gridiron show that is reserved for officials and the media, and it also has Hexagon, a public show like Honolulu's Gridiron, whose producers, writers and performers, drawn from both the media and from government (mostly staff aides on Capitol Hill.) It was a great privilege to do some Hexagon "news breaks" before moving here, but I prefer the Honolulu experience, where officials tend to truly enjoy getting needled. (In D.C. it is sometimes a pretense.) So: what issues and events are likely to be Gridiron fodder next year? We'd better start thinking about it now:

• Superferry by then could be either out of business or sailing.
• Oahu's south shore ferry will be renewed or not.
• go! could be out of business or flying.
• There will be an election campaign in full roar, or bore.
• We'll be in the middle of a war of health food stores.
• A place we like will close forever. (This happens every year.)
• Ethanol plants will be delayed. (Another perennial, perhaps.)

What am I leaving out? Your crystal ball has as good a chance of being right as mine.  If you missed this year's Gridiron -- Friday and Saturday nights at Diamond Head Theatre -- you missed Donalyn Dela Cruz's return as Colleen Hanabusa, and the Night of a Thousand Lingles, starring everyone we could fit on stage for our Lindapalooza. On Friday night you missed our Mufi song with the actual Mufi in the audience. And there was Catherine Toth's racy video about Duke Aiona (this is weird, but I went to high school in Maryland with a Cathy Toth who, who pronounced her name with a hard "o" and was a haole but otherwise looked a lot like our kama'aina version. What are the chances of that?) The management of the Gridiron show has emailed the rest of us that the show was a financial success, which means there will be more editorial interns at various newspapers and broadcast outlets in Hawaii next year. The Society of Professional Journalists is pleased to take responsibility for producing home-grown media talent so you don't have to get all your news from people who arrived here not knowing what lomi salmon is.

Girding for Gridiron

Every year, the Hawaii chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists raises money for paid internships by putting on a show. Gridiron, as it's called, stages a satirical revue on Friday and Saturday night at Diamond Head Theatre. It may be sold out already -- the SBJ website said Wednesday morning that "only a few" tickets were available for Saturday, but SPJ also sells tickets to the Thursday night dress rehearsal. The number to call is 550-TIKS. Journalists from local TV, radio and newspapers take part. Some sing and dance; the rest of us, less gifted, are restricted to skits or introducing acts. Some are people I see only at Gridiron rehearsals and performances because we compete on rival channels. We're all friends, though, and we're working together to create more of our tribe. A few of the regulars actually got their start from SPJ internships, so this is a very personal cause for them. Basically we write satirical lyrics to songs you know (although the word "lyrics" may be going too far in the case of one song this year) that reward your careful keeping up with local news events by riffing off of the wackiest stories of the past year. Last year the sewage spill in the Ala Wai turned "Tainted Blood" into "Tainted Flood" ("and now I'm suing you/'cause I surfed in poo.") In a previous year the theft of giant clams from the Waikiki Aquarium led to "Clams on the Run," and before that a man who smuggled a snake onto a plane turned "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" into "A Snake is in My Pants." For Gridiron regulars, the major suspense this year is how the company will handle the fact that Dan Cooke, who for years has played Linda Lingle, has moved to the mainland. Last night I saw how we dealt with it and you will find the results very funny. And when the laughter dies down we will have raised some funds for interns who may one day report the news to you.

The shipping news

Young Brothers got a 7.5% rate increase, only it's really a 15% rate increase, but it's really a bigger rate increase. Let me explain. State regulators approve or reject rate increase requests from companies as diverse as HMSA and Hawaiian Electric. News accounts nearly always focus on one number -- the average rate increase. But usually there are several rate increases. The increase may be X if you're a small company health plan, but Y is you're a large company; it may be X is you're a residential electric customer but Y if you're a corporate user. In the case of interisland shipping, Young Brothers put in different rate hikes for customers of different scales. The 7.5% increase -- after a 5.5% increase in 2005 and again in 2006 -- is not the increase approved for small customers. Their increase is 15%. "Small customers" is civilian talk. In the shipping business they would say "LCL customers." That stands for "less than container load." Big customers who can fill whole containers are less labor intensive for Young Brothers to handle than LCL customers, whose trucks line up at the dock with small packages that Young Brothers personnel then have to pack in containers themselves. The reason the increase is actually even bigger than 15% is that the PUC also said, for the first time, that Young Brothers can join Matson Navigation and Horizon Lines in assessing fuel surcharges without advance approval from anyone. The cost of fuel for containerships and tugboats has been doing the same thing as gasoline and jet fuel. Young Brothers understandably doesn't want to have to swallow fuel price increases itself. But the Seattle-owned company is doing okay. It has the regulatory right to make a profit of roughly 10%, and its business has doubled in the past few years. Soaring fuel prices probably cut its profit margin below that allowable percentage but not enough to keep its profits from growing smartly. I notice that Young Brothers did not ask for an increase for ro-ro shipping -- roll on, roll off -- which I guess was to remain competitive with Superferry if it ever sails.